Speaker
Description
In recent decades science has increasingly demanded scientists write more, be cited more, and produce more. This creates a quandary, scientists, entering the profession either in order to “make a difference’ or driven by curiosity are focused on a narrow track of writing papers. Furthermore, we have entered an age of distrust, where a scientist dedicating a lifetime to their topic can be hounded online, and countered by fallacies and misinformation. In this challenging landscapes scientists face difficult choices, how can they continue to conduct work with impact and integrity, maintain an academic position, and be seen as impartial?
Here we discuss this challenging landscape, and how we might walk the difficult line between “surviving publish or perish” whilst maintaining curiosity and impact driven research. We explore different forms of impact, and how we can communicate them honestly in increasingly challenging landscapes, and how we can translate our science into policy. Lastly we discuss how this landscape is evolving, and how we can at least attempt to prepare ourselves for the future, for increasingly interdisciplinary research, and a landscape with new tools, challenges and opportunities to contend with.
About:
Alice is a Professor at the University of Melbourne, and previously led research groups at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese Academy of Sciences following positions in Thailand, the CSIRO in Canberra, and a PhD at the University of Bristol. She is the author of over 200 papers and was in the top 2% of most cited researchers in Ecology in 2023 and 2024. She is President of INTECOL, Co-Chair of GEOBON, Chief editor of Climate Change Ecology and on various task forces for the UN, and a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPBES assessment on the monitoring framework. She has also worked with various science Ministries, drafted policy briefs, and worked with UN missions to inform more effective science driven policy. Through these roles she seeks to better mobilise and translate data to enable change in policy and practice.
Alices research covers a wide array of topics pertaining to understanding patterns of biodiversity and the drivers of biodiversity change with an aim of informing more effective conservation at all scales. Her work focuses on the interface between conservation ecology and conservation action, with an additional special focus on bats, including ecology, biogeography and OneHealth. She and her team collect and utilise diverse data to enable the development of new methods and frameworks, then integrate the outcomes into policy and practice through her various roles. Her research is driven by the need for better data and understanding to empower evidence informed change. By providing a bridge between science and filling key data and knowledge gaps she hopes to facilitate a transition to a more sustainable, and biosecure future.
